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<h1><a name="introduction">Introduction</a></h1>
<p>Dant is a Java Ant-based build tool. </p>
<h3>Why?</h3>
<p>The idea of Dant first appears in <a href="http://www.iona.com">IONA technology</a> as a part of CPI(Continuous Product Integration) buiding system. It was used to leverage the <a href="http://www.iona.com/products/artix/welcome.htm">Artix</a> performance test, which included 3 threading models, 8 networking transport bindings, 2 programming lanuages(C++ and Java), 2 main platforms(Windows and Linux ES), and 2 deployment models(Co-host, and C/S) , it will involve one powerful machines as Artix Server and several PC boxes as Artix Clients, all in a word, before Dant it cost two engineers about two weeks to publish one single performance report, which we think is too expensive. </p>
<p>So, what we really want to do here, is to create a standard, simple, automatic way to run those tests, to minimize the time spended in tedious testing works.</p>
<p>Here it is , Dant, short for Distributed Ant. It's based on Apache Ant, What you need to do now is just simply run the dameon process on those testing machines, write a simple, straightforward XML script, integrate the scripts into your CI(Continuous Integration) system. You are on it!</p>
<p>Only one night's work, the next day, you can sit in your cozy chair, have a cup of coffee, and read the fancy report generated by Dant.</p>
<p>It starts with performance test, but it never ends with it. you will find it is very useful for other purposes. Especiall for the networking products which involve the server side and the client side, and need a framework to run in a distributed networking enviroment. </p>
<p>Give it a try! </p>
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<p align="center">Copyright &copy; 2005 Dant Organization. All rights Reserved.</p>

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